Southwest Iowa still lagging behind in planting

The latest U.S.D.A. crop report shows continued problems last week with wet weather slowing planting in southwest and southcentral Iowa. This is a critical week for southwest Iowa — which has lagged behind the rest of the state most of the spring — as the calendar days continue passing.

Iowa State University Extension Agronomist, Aaron Sauegling monitors 14 counties in the southwest corner of the state where wet weather has put them behind. “The majority of all the corn is in in southwest Iowa. Soybean planting lags behind where we would like to be at this time of year. There’s still portions of southwest Iowa that have over half or 50 percent of the beans to be planted yet,” Sauegling explains.

The forecast is calling for some warm and dry days that farmers have been needing. “We’re optimistic that this week is going to provide us with the break that we need, that we just simply did not get the entire month of May for planting soybeans,” Sauegling says. Sauegling says the delay in planting beans is forcing some farmers to make crop management changes.

“I may increase my plant population. I’d like to narrow up the row — because what I need to do now as a soybean producer, I need to maximize my days,” according to Sauegling. “So, how I can do that is simply have more simply soybeans covering the ground, for ‘A’ weed control and ‘B’ I have to maximize yield. Corn at this point — I would probably be a little more panicked if I didn’t have my corn in.”

Soybean planting reached 88 percent complete and that’s nine days behind 2014, and one day behind average. The crop report shows 96 percent of the corn crop has emerged, which is 4 days ahead of the 5-year average.